7 Types of Project Managers

Having been a PM, having been around other PM’s, having had PM friends, and having hired PM’s for various projects I have worked on, I got to experience first hand the broad range of styles and effectiveness that typically goes with a PM designation.

Reflecting back on the experiences, I’ve come up with these seven PM types:

“Secretary” PM

Documents well, but doesn’t have deep understanding of the subject matter and is unable to predict what could go wrong.

Effectiveness: has little affect on timelines, although if documentation is complete, clear, and concise, can provide a way for others to spot issues, which could lead to efficiencies.

“Driver” PM

Strong personality, drives hard through dominance.

Effectiveness: can make people want to meet timelines to avoid having negative attention or conflicts with a “bully PM”, however runs a high risk of driving good people out of the project. Also can’t often spot potential issues, so ends up blind sighted a lot.

“Executive” PM

An executive who usually swoops in when things go off the rails. The style provides lots of flexibility for the team to feel empowered, however that could be a double edge sword when things go badly (can’t release).

Effectiveness: Usually it’s too little too late or just barely in time to save the situation, but ends up with a ton of fire drills and crisis management.

“Subject Matter Expert” PM

Comes from the domain with lots of domain expertise and lots of “seen it all” experience. Could be very useful to the project, provided they can keep an open mind and understand that things are always evolving and changing. For some reason these folks often lack the drive needed to actually steer the project — with all that knowledge they are like trivia buffs (in fact quite a few of them are).

Effectiveness: Has seen what’s been done before so bound to know the landmines to avoid (although that could be a double edge sword not to fall into “it will never work” trap). They are good to use in a consulting role on the project.

“Engineer” PM

Former engineers who are looking to expand their career beyond technology, these PM’s are good at understanding the internals and the inner workings of the product.

Effectiveness: Understanding the technology behind the product grants them a lot of credibility with engineers, however being a good engineer and a good PM are often at odds with each other as their priorities are different — engineers are focused on elegance, modularity, extensibility, maintainability, where’s PM’s focus should be on delivery. It’s a hard one to re-learn. Plus the EQ issues (guilty).

“Risk Manager” PM

This is a rare breed as organizations rarely assign a lot of value to risk management skill set when they look for PM talent. Yet, I would argue that it is by far the most important ingredient in a successful project. As I’ve learned from numerous mistakes myself, identifying and managing the risk properly and timely is often the difference between successful and failed project.

Effectiveness: Risk managers are usually very effective provided (and this is important) that they have solid domain expertise, are able to develop one quickly, or able to work closely with the experts to draw the risks out of them on an ongoing basis.

“Powerhouse” PM

A unicorn, powerhouse PM combines the qualities of most of the types above — has good domain expertise and learning capacity, good at risk management, has good EQ, is able to drive and motivate people, and likes to structure information.

The reason this is a unicorn profile is 1) it implies a lot of diverse set of experiences, 2) it requires an ambivert able to engage both parts of their brain and personality, and 3) these people tend to rise up quickly in ranks, leaving few to do “roll up the sleeves” project management.

Effectiveness: Very efficient if you can find them.

Conclusion

Of course, ideally you want a Powerhouse PM on any project. In fact, you have to have a powerhouse PM (even if their title doesn’t have PM in it), or the project will never get delivered. Now, in addition to a Powerhouse PM, you might want a “secretary”, “supervisor”, “engineer” or “subject matter expert”, and an “executive” PM, or a combination, depending on the project dynamics.

Personally, I strive to be that Powerhouse PM, but it does take deliberate practice to do so on the ongoing basis, and I definitely can’t say that I’ve been 100% successful.

Would love to hear YOUR thoughts and experiences when it comes to PM’s that you’ve had on your projects.

P.S.

So what about PMP or other PM certifications you might ask.. Aren't they a great equalizer?

In my experience at best they provide some common ground and framework to operate by, and of course it's always good to have people who are grounded in a common theory so they don't start reinventing the wheel; but rarely do they equalize the character traits and personal backgrounds of the PM's, plus people have a tendency to forget what they learn fast and fall back into what they know, so I argue that these classifications still stand. Having said that, PMO is a good thing if done right.